Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013 Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities - Case Study of Sanya’s Downtown Public Service Facilities in the Planning Process Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI, China academy of urban planning and design, China, 1. Background and proposition The achievement of equalization is a core idea of public service facilities for a city. It is also an important way to achieve society justice, reduce the disparity between urban and rural areas, the rich and the poor, as well as other negative impacts of imbalanced development. The approaches to achieve the equalization of public service facilities are quite different, depending on the main function, spatial pattern and population composition in a city. As one of China’s most representative tourist city, tourism has become the pillar industry in Sanya, which is the strongest drive for economic growth and also a major factor impacts its sustainable progress. After ten years of growth, Sanya is experiencing an explosive increase in terms of both its tourist number and tourist production value. Seasonal population agglomeration brings huge challenges to the supply of public service facilities. Problems such as land for public service facilities occupied by the overwhelming development of tourism real estate, inadequate supply and low quality of service facilities for local residents are becoming more and more serious. Under the background of seasonal population vibration and periodic demand variety on public service facilities, how to satisfy the different needs of tourists, migrant people and local residents, taken the population distribution as a point of breakthrough, becomes the primary aspect to rationally allocate the public service facilities in the tourism districts featured by dramatic population change. 2. Problems and cruxes 2.1 The periodical change in demand on public service facilities caused by seasonal population change With the proposal of global tourism island construction, as the most beautiful beach scenery all over Hainan Island, Sanya gets astonishing development in the tourism industry. Also, the amount of tourists and migrant people for rehabilitation are dramatically increasing year by year and take large percent in the foreign population. Considering the complexity of population composition and the feature of seasonal tourism population change, through the population census and calculation, the people in Sanya could be divided into three groups by the character of the seasonal movement and stay: The first group includes about 500,000 people, comprised of local residents including registered permanent residents and floating population, the growth rate of which is comparatively stable. The second group, 200,000 people in all, is migrant people who usually live in Sanya for half a year mostly from November to next April for retirement leisure and rehabilitation. The third group consists of tourists for short-time stay at an average of 100,000 persons a day. Based on the statistics of 12 months in a year, the daily average number in the peak month could reach 130,000 while the lowest is about 70,000. 1 Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013 Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities Considering these three groups, we have found that the periodical change of people in Sanya is obvious because the lowest amount is about 600,000 while the highest is up to 1,000,000 at the same scale as a city. (Figure 1) As a result, the generic approach of allocating public service facilities is apparently not applicable for we are confronted with 2 completely different urban sizes. Figure 1: image of demographic composition in Sanya’s central urban district (resource: drawing based on related data) 2.2 The land for public service facilities occupied by the overwhelming development of tourism real estate The real estate has become the pillar industry in Sanya, making huge contribution to the tertiary industry in this area. In 2009, the real estate accounts for 40 percent in the gross value of tertiary industry of Sanya; the number grew to more than 50 percent in 2010. Apparently, this situation is closely related to tourism boom. The development of Sanya’s real estate mainly relies on the growth of tourism. That is to say, the overwhelming and mighty development of tourism brings large opportunities and potentials to the real estate. Sanya’s housing price, in Sanya in 2011, jumps into the top ten highest ones in the whole country, whose growth sits the first place nationally. From that we can see the development of real estate contributes a large part to the whole city’s economic development. However, some social problems come along with the boom of real estate, for example, the migrant people causing high housing vacancy rate in Sanya up to 95 percent in some residential area; local residents are forced to move to the fringe area of city because of high housing price. Comparing the master plan in 1999 and the situation in 2008, the percentage of residential land increases more than 20 percent while the green space decreases 30 percent, and public service facilities remains almost at the same level. On the data of granted land types from 1991 to 2007, large amount of residential land were sold. Conversely, the amount of public service facilities land goes down. The planned lands for city political center 2 Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013 Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities in the master plan of 1999 were adjusted for real estate use in 2008; the land for sports center was used by tourism facilities land. It is a specific example to demonstrate the impact of real estate on public service facilities. Recently, the tourism development has been more focused, which would bring huge and immediate economic benefits while the investment in the fields on education and culture reduced. Taking the advocacy plan of key projects in 2010 as an example, we can see these programs on tourism and real estate are still the top priority. ( Figure 2) Figure 2: statistics chart of investment in Sanya’s key projects in 2012(resource from: Sanya Sta. Almanac) 2.3 The issue of public service inadequacy and backwardness for local residents is increasingly prominent With the boom of tourism, the high-qualified waterside resources attract large number of real estate investors. Public welfare and tight profit service facilities can hardly maintain under this market-oriented seaside district. The vitality center designed in the master plan is almost the last high-quality space for public service facilities. At the same time, the good landscape resources in the inland waterfront have been occupied by real estate. (Figure 3) The old districts renovation in high-quality waterside resources is facing the same problem: local residents move out while many foreigners crowd in. The high-incentive development cannot help to better the transportation in old districts but bring more stress. After renewal, the facilities will be upgraded to a higher level that will virtually worsen local residents facilities-inadequacy problem. 3 Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013 Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities The inappropriate renewal to old districts actually destroyed the local culture accumulated for a long time. The time visitors stay in Sanya is shorter than the other scenery resorts in foreign countries (Table 1). One of the most important reasons is that Sanya need more experience and exhibitions about local culture to attract visitors. The visitors enjoy the first several days in the hotel, however when the fresh feeling for the sea view diminished, they of course hope to experience the local culture and way of life, so the holiday resorts that could provide colorful local cultural experience will maintain visitors long time here. Figure 3: comparison of Google maps on inland waterfront real estate in 2002 and 2010 (resource: Google maps) Table 1: comparison tourism details in global famous scenery resorts (resource from: Sanya’s master plan) Global famous Cote d'Azure Costa del Gold Coast Miami Southeast Asian Hawaii Cankun Sanya tourism resorts Sol in in Austria Nice Cannes Spain Bali Phuket Island Tourists 4 2.5 9.5 4.55 10.4 1.66 5 7.62 3.27 10 amount(millions) Annul income €2 €1 €7.7 A$2.5 $1.5 $0.7 $1.2 $12.8 $3.6 $2.6 (billions) Personal spending € €400 €810 A$550 $114 $415 $257 $1680 $1110 $260 500 Average stop days 7.4 Daily spending € € € A$ $ $ $ $ $ $ 4 Fei WANG, Wei Wei, and Ming LI 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013 Equalization of Public Service Facilities for Tourist Cities 2.4 The imbalance distribution of public service facilities From Sanya’s spatial development of urban form in recent years, the development of the water overweighs the development of land. From the 1989 to 1999, the city sprawl is mainly along the sea side; from 1999 to 2009, the development came forward in great number of the high- qualified landscape resources inland when the seaside land is continuously been used; after 2008 till now, the high-qualified resources land in old city has been renewed and reconstructed came out one after another. From Sanya's existing distribution of the public service facilities; the development in central city is much more advanced than that outside of it. The public service facilities concentrated in the center(Figure 4). For a long period, all kinds of public service facilities locate mainly in the old city along the both sides of the river, which largely decide the democratic distribution of different districts. Seeing from the relation between locations of all kinds do public service facilities and migrant communities, the new communities where most foreigners chose to live in show the trend of embracing the area alone the both riversides where public service facilities are the densest.